


Coronation

by zmeischa



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, WTF Combat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 00:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zmeischa/pseuds/zmeischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2 June 1953</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coronation

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to belana for beta-reading it twice!

The carriage leaves the gates of Buckingham palace.

 

“Are you seriously going to watch this?” Roger asks in a stunned voice.

 

Tomas nods and puts a plate of sliced fruitcake on the coffee table. There is a smell of roasted bread from an electric toaster. In Thomas’s flat everything is new, modern and slightly unnatural like his too-silvery hair and his too-white and too-even teeth.

 

“This tedium will take three hours at least”, Roger grumbles. “And then what? We’ll go to the balcony and wave our little flags?”

 

“And then I’ll help you pack. So much money spent on your education, and you still can’t fold a shirt without wrinkling it”.

 

“You are a bore. And missed your calling as a valet”.

 

“Well, I used to be one – before you were born”.

 

“And, pray, what had put a stop to your brilliant career?”

 

“I kissed a footman. Indian or Ceylon?”

 

“Doesn’t matter. Indian. Whatever you take. And what did they do to you?”

 

“Made me an under-butler,” Thomas says imperturbably.

 

Roger laughs.

 

“Lucky you. When _I_ kissed a footman, they cut my allowance for a month”.

 

The queen Salote Tupou waves happily from an open carriage.

 

“You should go with me”, Roger says.

 

“Don’t be daft”.

 

“I’m serious. I want you to go with me. I want to play grandpa’s billiard with you, I want to drink after-dinner port with you, and have you take away my second glass, I want to take the dogs and walk with you in the forest, I want to show you the house, the park, the stables… You know, I saw my mother cry on two occasions only: when grandpa died and when we sold the horses”.

 

“Your mother has the right priorities. Unlike someone I know”.

 

Rogers sits next to Thomas and leans against his shoulder.

 

“I just want a normal life, you know.”

 

Thomas ruffles his hair.

 

“I know. Drink your tea, watch the coronation.”

 

Roger obediently looks at the screen, the queen looks at Roger.

 

“Your Majesty! Have pity on us, poor perverts!”

 

“Amen”, Thomas says. “Milk?”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The queen enters Westminster Abbey.

 

“Did I miss something?” Billy asks.

 

“Only the procession,” Sarah Nugent answers. “It rains in London, tough luck. Must be vexing, sitting in the open carriage when it rains, it goes one foot an hour, too. Boy or girl?”

 

“Girl”.

 

“Elizabeth?”

 

“You bet. I remember the V-E Day, I was in the middle of the obstetrics training. Four Victorias.”

 

The choir sings “I was glad”.

 

“Say what you will, it sounds much better in Latin”, Billy says. “It’s been ages since I went to the Mass. I wonder, if I copy the queen’s hairdo for the coronation reception, will it be tacky or just the thing?”

 

“My,” Sarah says, “you ain’t going to the reception at the Abbey? Try and remember the dresses, ‘cause I’m gonna ask you _everything_.”

 

“The Abbey?” the new nurse asks looking stunned. “That castle?”

 

“Yes”, Billy nods, “I practically grew up there. My father used to manage the estate before his second marriage. In the twenties it was a feudal paradise: twenty-five servants, everyone changing for dinner, every Christmas a partridge shooting… Of course, then they lost at the shares, in the thirties they had to pay the death duties, during the war the castle was made into a hospital… I wonder how the managed not to sell it yet”.

 

“Is it true what they say about Sir Roger in the village?” the new nurse asks smiling.

 

Sarah rolls her eyes.

 

“I wouldn’t know,” Billy says in an indifferent tone. “And what do they say?”

 

Pierced by her glance the new nurse shrinks and hides herself in her cup.

 

Someone knocks at the door.

 

“Doctor Branson, you here? We have a bleeding in ward two”.

 

“Coming!” Billy answers. “Once in my life I wanted to watch television… Calm down, I’m coming”.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The queen swears to protect the Church of England and preserve its bishops and clergy.

 

“I don’t get the necessity of summer coronation”, Barbara says. “The weather is nasty anyway.”

 

Anna gives her an expressive look.

 

“Alright, alright, I’m just mad at loosing three days of work because of God knows what. Every five minutes there is another intruder to my room aproned and armed with a broom. And tomorrow the hordes of Babel are coming, it won’t be possible to breathe freely. Whatever, I locked the photo-lab, I have the key, will impose on you for three straight days.”

 

“I’m sure Lady Mary asked you to stay for the reception”.

 

“Yeah,” Barbara says, “I can imagine. ‘And here’s Barbara, oh, pardon, doctor Bates, I keep forgetting, how silly of me. Her father used to be my father’s valet, her mother was my lady’s maid, and now Barbara – doctor Bates – teaches history of architecture and writes a book about our Downton. Isn’t it fascinating?’”

 

“Don’t forget it was Lady Mary who paid for your college”.

 

“Je-e-e-esus Christ. You didn’t remind me about it for two whole hours, I was just beginning to wonder if everything was all right with you”.

 

“Any other lady in her place would’ve just made you her lady’s maid and believed that she did us a great favor”.

 

Barbara silently lights her cigarette.

 

The queen kisses the Bible.

 

“They say Sir Roger is coming for the reception”, Anna says.

 

Barbara chokes on her smoke.

 

“And now you made me almost regret I’m going to miss this. I can imagine the coronation he’ll make for them, an event to remember”.

 

“That is a very ugly talk”.

 

“Oh come on, don’t worry. Billy says he came for her birthday and was almost normal compared to three years ago. Drank one single bottle of beer, when was the last time _that_ happened? It might all be fine, after all. Mum, I can’t bear to look at pa’s glasses, they’re horrid. If I have to spend my days uselessly, let me go to Ripon and get him a new pair”.

 

“I can hear you”, Bates says. “Anna, tell her not to throw her money at the wind. These are wonderful glasses, very comfortable”.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The camera shows a velvet curtain.

 

“Hey, what’s that?” Charley asks with a puzzled look.

 

“That is a sacrament”, Alfred answers importantly. “Now the archbishop will anoint ‘er Majesty with the ‘oly oil”.

 

“Yeah, but why the curtain?”

 

“You dunce, I keep telling you – it’s a sacrament. A ‘oly mystery, sacrosanct is the word. You can’t show something sacrosanct on television, can you?”

 

“But you can show it to the people in the cathedral, right?”

 

“And you think there’s just common crowd in the cathedral, Jack and John and their neighbors?”

 

“Stop it, you roosters”, Daisy says. “And old fool and a young one. Someone, put the kettle on”.

 

Three daughters-in-law rush to the stove.

 

“They say there’s gonna be a reception at the Abbey, in ‘onour of the coronation”, Jane says.

 

“Huh”, Daisy says, “a reception. Footmen from the restaurant again, I guess. Well, Mrs. Kent can’t be lazy all year long, let ‘er show once in a while what she’s worth”.

 

Alfred nudges her with his elbow.

 

“You ain’t jealous, is you?”

 

“Jealous?” Daysy snorts. “Of who? Ivy the kitchen-maid she was, and the kitchen-maid she is. There ain’t no cooks nowadays, all they do is open tins. ‘ow many servants is there in Downton, eight? Ten with the lord and lady. Before the war I were cooking the dinner for ten every day, in that very kitchen, and wasn’t running around the stove like a headless hen, neither”.

 

Elsie pours tea.

 

“Who made them biscuits?” Daisy asks suspiciously.

 

“That’s my Lizzie’s baking”, William answers in a careful voice.

 

Lizzie clutches her knees and stops breathing.

 

“Not bad”, Daisy says patronizingly, “not bad. Look at you, not yet five years married and I already made a decent cook out of you”.

 

Lizzie smiles and turns a violent shade of red. This is her first Michelin star.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 The Queen leaves Westminster Abbey.

 

“Hard to believe”, Edith says, “this is my sixth monarch”.

 

Vilma, her seven-years-old granddaughter, is rather uninterested in this piece of information.

 

“When I was born, Queen Victoria was still reining – oh dear, it sounds as if I lived in times of Tutankhamen!”

 

Judging by Vilma’s face neither of those two names ring a bell.

 

“Don’t tell anyone”, Edith laughs, “but I remember Mafeking very well. We were in London for some reason and the procession passed right under our windows. I was so scared! And then my father came back from the war and I didn’t recognize him, wouldn’t even let him hug me. Mary had spent the next ten years reminding me of it. Give me the album”.

 

Vilma takes a heave leather-bound album from the bedside table.

 

“Here, that’s me being presented at court, when we had King Edward. This thing in my hair is called _aigrette_ ; do you know what it is made of? Ostrich-feather. Just you look at the size of my cheeks!”

 

Vilma looks at the black-and-white photo of a round-faced girl in a dress with a train, then at her grandmother. It seems that she has difficulties believing that those two are the same person.

 

“Then we had King George, oh dear, all my youth!”

 

Vilma turns over yellow leaves. Men in uniform, Edith on a tractor, a black-eyed girl hugging a dog, Edith dressed in a veil and white lace, a beach at Deauville, the Great Pyramids, Edith holding a very ugly baby, men in evening-dress. 

 

“Then there was another King Edward, he married that horrible American woman and abducted. And, of course, George the Sixth, but I then was already living at America.”

 

“That’s daddy”, says Vilma, “and who is this?”

 

“That is your uncle Roger, earl Grantham. You see the wings? It means that he was a pilot. And here, look, do you know who are they? No? They are your aunts, Isobel and Violet.”

 

“They are not aunts, they are _girls_!”

 

“They were born twenty years after Roger, Mary has always been… And this is Downton Abbey. I should take you to England, show you your ancestral estate before they make it into boys’ school or something”.

 

Edith gives the TV-set a long look.

 

“I believe I saw Mary”, she mutters. “Oh, well, just an illusion, I suppose”.

  

 


End file.
